The invention relates to an electronic component and a semiconductor device, a method of making the same and method of mounting the same, a circuit board, and an electronic instrument, and in particular relates to a compact electronic component and a semiconductor device having a package size close to the chip size, a method of making the same and method of mounting the same, a circuit board, and an electronic instrument.
To pursue high-density mounting in semiconductor devices, bare chip mounting is the ideal. However, for bare chips, quality control and handling are difficult. In answer to this, CSP (chip scale package), or packages whose size is close to that of the chip, have been developed.
Of the forms of CSP semiconductor device developed, one form has a flexible substrate provided, patterned on the active surface of the semiconductor chip, and on this flexible substrate are formed a plurality of external electrodes. It is also known to inject a resin between the active surface of the semiconductor chip and the flexible substrate, in order to absorb the thermal stress. In Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 7-297236, as the flexible substrate is described the use of a thin film carrier tape.
In these methods of fabricating a semiconductor device, a semiconductor chip is cut from a wafer, and individual semiconductor chips are mounted on a flexible substrate. As a result, not only is the patterned flexible substrate necessary, but also a process is required to mount each individual semiconductor chip on the flexible substrate, and therefore the devices used in each of the steps of the process must be special-purpose equipments, and the cost is increased.
Besides, a semiconductor device to which a CSP type package is applied is surface-mounted, and has a plurality of bumps for mounting on a circuit board. The surface on which these bumps are formed is preferably protected by the provision, for example, of a photosensitive resin.
However, since a photosensitive resin is electrically insulating, and mounting while it remains on the bumps is not possible, it is necessary to remove the photosensitive resin from the top of the bumps. Here, in order to remove a part of the photosensitive resin, lithography must be applied, and this results in the problem of an increased number of steps.
In this way, a conventional semiconductor device suffers from inferior efficiency in the process from fabrication to mounting.
The invention has as its object the solution of the above described problems, and this object subsists in the provision of an electronic component and a semiconductor device, a method of making the same and method of mounting the same, a circuit board, and an electronic instrument such that the process from fabrication to mounting can be carried out efficiently.